30/01/2018 House of Lords

I think we are all grateful to the

Constitution committee to their

pragmatic amendments to achieve the

objectives of the bill. We all want

to avoid this becoming a fiendishly

complex process that weakens

Parliamentary seven sovereignty. The

pro Minister has consistently argued

that she wanted a clean bill, as if

in some way amendments made

legislation dirty and impure.

Listening to the debates in the

other place, I hope we have now

moved on from such ridiculous

notions and accompanying sabre

rattling we have seen before. The

government itself has pledged to

table a moment to address issues

such as devolution settlement and

MPs across the comments have said

that this house can be helpful on

unresolved issues. We have even seen

rare harmony on the Conservative

benches as former Attorney General,

Cam Clark and the Leader of the

House of Lords -- Ken Clarke and the

father of the House all came

together. I welcome the condiment

from Andrea Leadsom last week when

she said that noble Lords play a

very important proviso reroll for

which we are grateful, and they have

the expertise that the common

benefits from. We welcome that

opportunity. Before we get carried

away, a brief constitutional

reminder that any amendments passed

by the House here provide a further

opportunity for consideration by MPs

who have the final say. My Lords,

for those who criticise that role, I

want to emphasise again, a point

that I have made before. The process

of Brexit is too important and too

complex to be left to those who have

no doubt. Because only doubt brings

questioning. And it is only through

questioning that we examine and

issue enough to make sure we get the

detail right. Too often, the

government had put off tough

decisions. We have heard in our

questions, the financial services

sector is crying out for the

government to publish of future

partnership planning, none has been

forthcoming and the responses have

been complacent at best. 19 months

since the referendum, it

unacceptable that the government had

not got a grip on issues concerning

Northern Ireland, our crown

dependencies and overseas. We have

not seen a credible way of